Long Haul on the Interstate
Metronomic, the relentless drumbeat of motion
may stutter or slow but never stops,
allows no silence, no interruption of the droning
wheels whirring beneath me like a mantra.
Whatever spins glitter behind my eyes
is diluted by headlights knifing the night,
too frequent for darkness to open
wide enough for me to look, question
where I’m flying to, fleeing to, belong.
The beat comes up through the road
like a telltale heart dragged over tar
strips, rhythm to what I think is a song
I’m singing as I sling myself headlong into
the landscape within, wide open spaces there
bristling wind and light, everything
headed toward a rough rut in the earth.
This is what drives me: believing
if I stop, the dust I am will settle
over my length as if thrown from a shovel.
Refusing to admit any place I came from
could be saved, any more than I was.
pea river journal 
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